Looking though videos on Youtube and hearing what people say on this forum, I've been seeing a lot of this:

"Hello im 15 years oldi would like to apologise for what my generation has done to music.that is* all."

My question is;

Is this correct and our generation is creating garbage music, or are people not looking hard enough for good current bands and have that, "I hate my generation" Mentality that exists in 90's cartoon fanatics?

I wouldn't say that our generation is making bad music, but simply bad popular music. Think about it, the "outsiders" if you will, never seem to appreciate pop that much. A noted exception might be grunge in the 90s, or rock in the 60s and 70s, but those are the only two I can think of.

It's basically like the 1980s all over again in terms of music. Personally, I enjoy bands like Porcupine Tree and Daft Punk, and they still tour and make music.

I'd say it's about 50/50. We haven't been looking hard enough for good music, but as the bad music gets more and more popular, people are saying 'oh people like this lets make more' and more bad music is produced

music is the sort of thing that looks a lot better in hindsight. looking back at the 1960s, for example, we remember the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan etc because they are the artists whose popularity has endured. There was just as much bad music then as there is now, but we don't think of it because it's no longer in the public consciousness.

Most popular music nowadays is just taking everything "everyday people" want and smashing it together into a lovely marketing extravaganza. And by lovely I mean terrible.

I started a group on Facebook between me and friends and their friends and their friends which basically share music that you don't hear on the radio, and I'm hearing a lot of awesome indie rock, electronic, and more. It's all from this generation too.

"Bad music" is subject to opinion, and as long as we hold independent thought, there will always be a portion of individuals who will not like certain music of their generation. You may think "music is dead nowadays oh my god the future looks horrible etc etc!", but you should consider what many oldies would think about rock and roll when it was introduced. Hint: They thought just like what you do now about current music. But guess what? It doesn't matter! Music is not going to die, it's just your brain holding conservative views about what music you like. There's no problem with that.

Musicians nowadays are no worse than musicians 50 years ago, it's just that you were raised listening to different music than what people listened to 50 years ago. Your opinion is irrelevant. Why can't you just listen to the music you like and not go bashing other people for what they like? What gives you the right to say that the music they like is shit?

It could be that producers and other investors want to get more money with less money, which may reflect on the quality of music if they wanna add some "definite hit" stuff in them. Or in them music videos which play a huge role in success.

And music has been played for a LONG time, even in just the last 10 years. So how can anyone even come up with new chords anymore?

But there's some shit even in the last 2 years that I'd listen. And funny how you'd say "People are not looking hard enough" when they (who? Teens and kids?) are looking HARD at like MTV and what have you in America. All I see is $$$$$$.

There's a lot more money being poured into it than there was in the 60s-70s, it leads to less focus on things that are good because the factory-churned shit gets so much more publicity. Then there's the people who just make shitty stuff they know will be a hit but that's been around for ages.

A big point I'd like to make though is that you're focussing on the good ones from the past, not the whole thing. The good ones come through, people remember them, the shit ones are pushed to the back of people's memories. Ask anyone who actually lived then, they'll tell you how much shit was around. Most will probably tell you how much they unappreciated the good stuff too.

Most popular music nowadays is just taking everything "everyday people" want and smashing it together into a lovely marketing extravaganza. And by lovely I mean terrible.

I started a group on Facebook between me and friends and their friends and their friends which basically share music that you don't hear on the radio, and I'm hearing a lot of awesome indie rock, electronic, and more. It's all from this generation too.

It all depends on where you look, basically.

Sign me up for that.

But on topic: Music in recent years is mostly just an extremely vast marketing scheme, rarely do you see a popular musician/band/pop idol with actual talent. Not to say that they suck, its just that they are corporate buyouts with no spirit, simply singing what the people want and not influencing the people like they are supposed to.

No. There was "shit" music back then aswell, and this feeling will always exist.
Next generation after ours will also get to a point in life where they will say "Music is shit nowadays, back in my days, music was good". And this being said by people from a generation that we recognized as having awful music.

Although nowadays, all I see is increadibly shitty clicheish lyrics who have no meaning at all or mean everything that is wrong with the world (stuff about being gangsta and so on) and rehashes of songs that used to be good and were smacked to the ground in some way.

Also, to me, dubstep all sounds the same. Either that or I've been listening to the same artist over and over again and all his shit sounds EXACTLY ALIKE.

I feel like it's a combination of both shitty music making and people not looking hard enough, Like someone in this thread said 'Lots of studios are just picking up anyone to make a profit' which I believe true, perhaps all of this is due to easy music production, I mean think about it, No one needs talent anymore if you're singing you can auto tune yourself but who said singing is necessary these days? Now we can just make cheap beats on computers and change them a little throughout a song. As to why we're not looking hard enough or why It's hard to find -- there are still good musicians out there but because of the huge mass produced cheap pile of crap that get's featured youtube it's harder to find decent music.

From my opinion, today's generation of music is more repetitive and many (not all) popular music out there have simple lyrics that are iconic and easy to remember (sort of). There's also alot of loud synthesizers that just totally funk up the music, not alot of effort is needed to create a simple repetitive melody. With my Garage Band app on my Mac, if I had a small tune, I could really just put that into my template, add some bunch of sound effects and voila, I'm done. Technology has really changed what music is really.
Back in the olden days, popular songs such as "Yesterday" by the Beatles really had alot of meaning and hours of effort, really thinking and playing many times to create a wonderful song. Without the aid of technology back then, many famous artists would have had to really think and think again about their music, erase their notes from the sheet music only to replace it by a new note countless and endless amounts of time.
Jazz and many other types of genre that have been played back in the olden days and now are all still good. I still love jazz and soul because whenever people do solos, etc from a simple melody, they really understand and feel the music to make music flow and to sense a form of heaven in the ears. It's so disappointing that jazz is fading out quite alot now.

More and more different types of music. A lot of new music is almost universally shitty (like metzer or whatever that white noise crap is), some is only liked by some (rap and dubstep), some can be pretty good but not well known (hipster music). There are a lot more genres and artists now than there were 50 years ago, and therefore less consensus on what sucks and what doesn't suck.

People's taste in music is subjective. What you think is shit music isn't going to be another person's idea of shit music. 14 year old girls are probably going to think Justin Bieber is the pinnacle of musicianship and will think your taste in Slayer is shit. A lot of people are also going to think dubstep is awesome and will cringe when they hear some of your favorite music.

In about 30 years, you'll probably have little kids saying that they're sorry for this "disco revival" movement of the 2040s or something, and consider Kings of Leon or Radiohead to be one of the best bands of the old days.

The problem is is that people who don't enjoy 'popular' music act like their taste is objective. A lot of people actually enjoy popular music, and you shouldn't really care that much about it. It's not the end of the world because people have a different musical taste.

And there is still good music being made nowadays, it's just that these artists don't get a lot of attention because they aren't signed to a large label.

People's taste in music is subjective. What you think is shit music isn't going to be another person's idea of shit music. 14 year old girls are probably going to think Justin Bieber is the pinnacle of musicianship and will think your taste in Slayer is shit. A lot of people are also going to think dubstep is awesome and will cringe when they hear some of your favorite music.

In about 30 years, you'll probably have little kids saying that they're sorry for this "disco revival" movement of the 2040s or something, and consider Kings of Leon or Radiohead to be one of the best bands of the old days.

No one remembers the bad music, and a lot more music is being made now, and I don't think the proportions of bad music to good music have changed much in the last 40-50 years. It's those reasons why I think that music quality isn't really changing, now more people have access to tools to create music, that makes more bad and good music.

This can't really be a debate if you ask me because it is all 100% opinionated. Though honestly in 20-30 years we will all be saying music was better now because we remember all the good songs, But forget the bad songs.

Today's music is the best music. There are more genres and styles than ever. And there are more bands playing each genre than ever. If you think music today is crap then you don't know shit. You haven't even looked.

If you don't like today's pop music, then okay, that's your opinion. But don't say it "takes no talent" or is more "generic" than pop music was before. It's not true. You don't know what you're talking about.